“Is your heart right?”

“Is your heart right?” These words reverberate through human history from the lost cries of the ancient prophets to the wrinkled pages of St. Augustine, from the tender prayer of St. John of the Cross to the fiery preaching of Billy Graham. Is your heart right?

Schools, over years and years, educate our minds, but where is the school of the heart? “At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.” We know it to be true, but we avoid it like poison. Is your heart right?

We toss and turn in the furnace of anxiety. Worry seeps into our bloodstream, and the blood clots. Death. Despair. War. Brokenness. The newspapers. It is too much. Our only relief comes with sleep, and even then it comes with tumult and the promise of morning sorrow. “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in you.” In the other there is a promise of hope, a covenant. Love fulfills, but we run from it as if it were death. Is your heart right?

We learn about matter before we learn about love, and matter traps us. It has no heart. It obeys the immutable laws. It just is. It knows not love, not compassion. It is not restless. It does’t know another. It cannot choose. Woe to the man who sees himself as matter in motion. He will neither know the beauty of love nor the pain of fear. He will find stasis, he will find enlightenment, but he will not find love. Is your heart right?

Love soars on eagles’ wings and contemplates it all from above. The throws of love sear the memory with blowtorches of desire, and the scars never fade. There is no need for faith or hope when love takes the reins, for love is the only virtue that abides. Is your heart right?

Salvation cannot come to the person who gives up on love. Such a man has committed spiritual suicide. He breathes without breath. He walks, but in circles. The man who loves, however, rides his bicycle into the horizon until he reaches the sun. He dies without reaching his goal, but his death points directly to his undying heart.